Fame: not for the faint of heart

Life among the glittering and golden:

Matthew Spender — the son of poet Stephen Spender and pianist Natasha Spender — opens his remarkable memoir with a double whammy. On Oct. 21, 2010, he learns of his mother’s death at her London house in St. John’s Wood. That evening, while saying his final goodbyes, he discovers “a curl of papers” on her bedside table: 

“In a desultory way I straightened them out. They were documents designed to exclude me from my father’s literary inheritance. A covering letter showed that she’d arranged to sign these in front of the lawyer a few days later.” 

But without a notarized signature, the documents possess no legal validity. “A lot of old ladies leave things just a bit too late,” the lawyer says the following afternoon to Matthew as he drops the papers into the trash.

It's the sort of thing one can expect from a certain sort of mom:

Natasha comes across as tormented, acutely status-conscious, and, occasionally, kind and compassionate.